Camden UNISON hosts international call for solidarity with Iraqi trade unions

The Camden Branch of UNISON, the public sector workers’ union organised a meeting on Thursday 5th August at Camden Town Hall in north London for trade unionists to meet Gene Bruskin, co-founder and National Convener of US Labor Against War (USLAW) http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org/. Gene was visiting London to meet British labour movement activists campaigning against the war on Iraq and to speak to the Iraqi Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU) about the US/UK occupation of their country and Iraqi workers' struggle for jobs, democracy and real sovereignty.

IFTU representative Abdullah Muhsin meets Gene Bruskin of USLAW

Liz Leicester Chair of Camden UNISON opened the packed meeting which was attended by grass roots trade union activists and national trade union leaders, including Tony Donaghey RMT National President. Dick Barry of UNISON’s National Policy Department outlined his union’s plans to bring young Iraqi trade unionists to London for education and training courses.

RMT member Alex Gordon, who participated in a British trade union delegation to Iraq in October 2003 spoke about the recent successes of British trade unionists in developing anti-war policies in the British TUC and the labour movement. The continuing the occupation of Iraq by US and UK governments now requires British trade unions to build effective solidarity action with the Iraqi labour movement and the IFTU.

He called on trade unionists to support the motion on Iraq submitted by NATFHE, the University & College Lecturers' Union, to the forthcoming TUC Conference in September 2004. The British labour movement needs to support their sisters and brothers in Iraq to rebuild their labour movement. This would mark a welcome development of the important decision adopted by the TUC at its Conference in 2003 to condemn the war on Iraq.

Alex Gordon (RMT), Abdullah Muhsin (IFTU), Gene Bruskin (USLAW) and Daniel Blackburn (International Committee on Trade Union Rights) meet with IFTU representative.

USLAW National Convenor, Gene Bruskin congratulated British trade unionists for the anti-war position they had won at the 2003 TUC Conference. However he contrasted the position of the US unions: "We have not won the argument against the war in the US labour movement. Thus, I am here representing the rank and file labour coalition USLAW, not representing the AFL-CIO."

Gene spoke at length about US foreign policy and the traditional reluctance of US labour unions to even discuss this matter - by default supporting US foreign policy. However, he said by contrast the labour movement in the build up to the war on Iraq has developed a grass roots campaign against the war, the invasion and the occupation of Iraq. In particular USLAW calls for the US military budget to be slashed to pay for domestic social policy programs.

Gene pointed out that the US and UK governments are the only significant members of the coalition forces occupying Iraq (the others are just ‘window dressing’). Labour movements in the US and UK must increase solidarity action against the occupation. This is why it is crucial that the US labour movement and others around the world must now support initiatives taken by Iraqi workers to build trade unions. He said: "It is not enough just what we say, it is important to say what we can do." On behalf of USLAW he presented Abdullah Muhsin, the UK representative of the IFTU with a cheque for $5,000.

Abdullah Muhsin of the IFTU gave an account of the history of the independent democratic labour movement in Iraq, from Saddam Hussein’s brutal suppression of the tobacco workers’ strikes organised by the Workers’ Democratic Trade Union Movement in Kurdistan in the 1980s to the foundation of the IFTU in May 2003.

Abdullah pointed out that the Iraqi people’s language and culture is rich in words and ideas expressing revolt and liberation; the ‘intifada’ of the Iraqi student movement in the 1950s and ‘Al Thawra’ (the revolution) the proper name for the area of Baghdad often referred to now as ‘Sadr City’. Abdullah reminded the meeting that the so-called ‘Iraqi resistance’ referred to in the media represent neither a national liberation struggle (but rather an attempt to ‘balkanise’ Iraq) nor the possibility of re-building Iraqi civil society (except on the model of a mediaeval theocracy).

The IFTU welcomes the many expressions of support from the international labour movement for their task of rebuilding Iraq’s trade unions and believes that they are fundamental to establishing a free and democratic secular Iraq in which civil society can be rebuilt.

Posted by abdullah at August 12, 2004 03:06 PM